Millionaire businessman Donghua Liu has hired a high-profile Queen’s Counsel to deal with any legal action from the Labour Party.

Aucklander Paul Davison, QC, is heading a team of advisers for Liu reviewing the property developer’s records following the comments of David Cunliffe this week.

The Weekend Herald understands this includes more than 30 photographs taken over 18 months linking Liu to Labour, including a fundraiser at an Auckland restaurant and a trip to China, where he hosted a Cabinet minister in 2007.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2014 at 11:00 pm and is filed under NZ Politics.
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On the left wing blogs they’ve been going off for a while about how this is all a National/Herald plot, there’s no substance and somebody should ‘do something’.

This response makes me think that there are no adults in Cunliffe’s office, leading them to think that threatening to sue was a good political move. It wasn’t, particularly when Liu was keeping his mouth shut before. Now any and all dirt comes out, and it stays in the media sucking oxygen for longer.

This is something National learned from the cup of tea recording – it came out eventually anyway and dragging it out slowly made it seem more interesting than the content actually was.

In all my years blogging and in social media watching and being a part in disseminating information about such scandals I can safely say that the National Party simply aren’t competent enough to orchestra such a superb clusterfuck by Labour.

I can’t wait to see the photos. Not because of what they have in them, that’s the boring bit. What I really can’t wait for is to hear the howls of indignation, protestations and denials from the left when the photos are released.

They’ll still accuse National of a smear campaign. Not only does John Key brush his teeth with fresh kitten after eating a baby every night, he uses his spare time to photoshop Labour ministers into photos of Liu.

The desperate denial of reality by the left (like in Bradbury’s column today, followed by the comments from the left wing sycophants) actually makes me sad – how could we have such stupid people in NZ?

I posted on Whale yesterday – This will turn out to be Labour’s biggest own goal in a season littered with them. Do these people have no clue how the Chinese roll and how HUGE losing face is in their culture? They saw Liu’s correction as somehow complete vindication of Cunlffe and foolishly went on counter attack when political wisdom should’ve told them they actually got a reprieve on this issue and, if left alone, it would mercifully have died for Labour.

Ordering records from China, hiring John Davison QC; if I were Labour I’d be afraid-very afraid. Labour have left him no option but to disclose everything! No matter how rich you are you don’t give $100k to a party without keeping track of where the dosh went from your end. This is going to get a whole new shade of ugly for Labour. Bank statements: likely – photos of brown bags of cash changing hands: the jackpot! And if Liu ends up being one of Cunliffe’s secret donors to his trust, even with a mid to low 20’s result staring Labour in the face, Cunliffe will be rolled.

Labour’s mistake was to attack Donghua Liu’s credibility. Surely Raymond Huo, formerly the lawyer for Labour’s Chinese bagman Steven Ching and now a Labour List MP would have told his colleagues that the worst thing that can happen in Chinese culture is to lose face.

When Labour started accusing Mr Liu of buying Ministers off, lying, and fabricating allegations, they left him with no alternative but to prove Labour wrong and save face. The fact that he has lawyered up with one of NZ’s top QC’s, produced photographs and other evidence, and is retrieving financial records from China should be very worrying for Mr Cunliffe and his cronies. Cunliffe moaned long and loud last night about a “sustained smear campaign” from National, but he is about to find out that his and his party’s ineptitude has got it into a power of hurt, and that the Nats have been able to stand back and watch it all unravel.

Not just that. Attacking the Herald’s credibility has probably ensured that the Herald wouldn’t just drop the story and move on. It gave them incentive to investigate as thoroughly as possible to ensure they could present a strong case against Labour.

Liu was imprecise and the Herald subsequently exaggerated the initial case. Neither are likely to make the same mistake again.

In the meantime Labour and it’s social media agents, especially those at The Standard, keep repeating the same “poor us” self victimising mistakes. They’ve been inviting a backlash.

It looks like Liu wants Chinese utu but the Herald will be a willing facilitator.

In the meantime Labour and it’s social media agents, especially those at The Standard, keep repeating the same “poor us” self victimising mistakes. They’ve been inviting a backlash.

You mean the Labour Party staffers, some of whom work from the War Room, who blog anonymously at The Standard Pete, giving a veneer of being arm’s-length from the party? It’s going to be fun watching the likes of them, Bradbury and Lprent swallow their words when Jared Savage starts tabling evidence.

Don’t piss a rich man off. He has the money to create trouble, real trouble. Further odds are Labour will not be the next Government so it will be easy to damage the party. Labour will use every emotion in its playbook including playing the victim and asking people to feel sorry for them and give them a break. Trouble is Labour will attack your throat when you are down so why should they get mercy now.

Labour really is eating itself. Aside from the above, they now want to ‘re-unite’ PI families (meaning more of them coming here to cost the tax payer 3 x what they produce) and bring in an extra 250 refugees in a year.

I think Labour have genuinely convinced themselves that this whole thing is some ghastly plot orchestrated by National. Part of the reason they have is because it is fundamentally the way Labour would do things.

It reminds me of something the Russians did during the cold war. When biological weapons were banned, they continued their development at full speed. The rationale was “hey, we’re doing it, so the US must be as well.”

Speaking of wars, Labour picking a fight with the Herald is eerily similar to Hitler picking a fight with the US when they were in the middle of losing to the USSR.

When will people learn that making a Chinese person lose face is the worst thing you can do – harmony is the right way.
Labour have constantly slagged Mr Liu and will now feel his wrath when he is ready.

I really don’t understand Labour wanting to keep this issue in the media, rather than moving on. But, I also don’t understand Labour wanting to portray this as being a devious plot devised by John Key. Would I rather vote for a man who can pull together dozens of people in order to set up the Labour Party, then execute everything flawlessly… Or vote for the incompetent rube who walked right in to it and couldn’t figure out how to adapt and recover?

Peter George has raised an excellent point. The more peripheral clusterfark here is Cunliffe and Labour’s attacks on the Herald. This foolishness has four effects – all bad for Labour:
(i) It prompted the Herald to publish an unusual defense of its conduct re-emphasizing its supposed lack of political bias;
(ii) It’s kept the issue alive as a media event when political prudence would demand doing all in the party’s power to bury the story or at least let it die;
(iii) It guarantees the Herald will give high prominence to Liu’s disclosures because both Liu and the Herald’s credibility has been questioned by Labour and
(iv) It will somewhat reverse the natural tendency of the Herald to be mostly pro-Labour in their outlook. According to The Standard and other Labour partisans, this is a National/Herald conspiracy which comes as a great surprise to regular readers of the Herald. This will affect the type of coverage the Herald will give other political issues involving Labour – they will be more neutral and less sympathetic to their policy launches and they will be more critical in their questioning of Labour in general and Cunliffe and particular.

Labour have flailed desperately on this issue, lashing out quickly as soon as there was a perceived reprieve or advantage. To claim a National-led smear campaign is all they can say speaks volumes for their dismal situation. Labour are perfectly capable of conducting a circular firing squad without any help from National. Of course Key and other front benchers are giving strategic little nudges here and there but mostly they are obeying the age old political wisdom of staying out of the way when your enemy is self destructing.

It is surprising that many folk seem puzzled by the vitriol, nay hatred, summoned by the left on this issue.

Before we forget, Hitler was a socialist (his pre-occupation with communism and the Soviets was driven by his territorial and power ambitions rather than ideology), Stalin was worse. Then there was the egg cracking Lenin and their mate Trotsky. And let us not forget Mao, Pol Pot and the North Korean criminals. The French revolutionaries were also far to the left, but they are difficult to place in a modern context. Mussolini was a self aggrandized, gutless fool who received his just deserts.

History seems to show very clearly that it is the left and their fellow travellers who really threaten mankind. Right wingers are without exception (that I can recall) individuals who have a relatively short political life. The Japanese are the exceptions, but their point of difference was not socio-economic.

The left lives and dies by the sword, invariably swung by their own hands. Long may it be so.

That isn’t her. The photo does look something like the one she used but if you actually read the article it can’t possibly be about her.
The story given has about as much of a relationship to Helen’s career as David Cunliffe’s CV had to his less than successful attempts at a career in Foreign Affairs and that Management Consulting Group he worked for.

Any connection between the CV listed under that photo you linked to and reality are entirely coincidental.

As I wrote earlier ‘embrace’ Liu and his entrapment at your own peril. From Immigration’s own records he gave evidence of giving bribes to a Chinese official. Just to make that clear he bribed an official and then sold him down the river. Whether its Labour, National or the Greens who have taken money from him, it is at his disposal to claim what he likes as the reason for the ‘gift.’ I appreciate all this ‘loss of face’ solemnity as though it elevates Liu in some way, well it does – the guy is a mercenary, if Labour or the Nats want to claim credit for his actions against the other then it is shown the naivety of NZ politics and its politicians. I can’t help but think someone like Muldoon would have planted one on his nose and kicked him down the stairs rather than cultivate his next act of treachery.